Wildfire
by ohmytheon
Summary: A deadly lesson that everyone against the military needs to learn: Do not kidnap Riza Hawkeye. The outcome will not be pleasant and her commanding officer won't be so kind.


**Author's Notes:** So there were a few gifsets on tumblr going around about vengeful Roy, and that is honest to god one of my biggest weaknesses in life. I know I say that a lot, but seriously, I could write a ten page essay about that alone probably. This is partially inspired by and written for **stupidsexymustang** , who is too kind to me and knows exactly what I want to write for myself and convinces me that I'm actually writing it for other people. This could actually be considered a sequel to a drabble that I haven't posted yet (93). I didn't realize that I was that far behind. But this describes events that Riza briefly mentioned to Edward in Drabble 36 ("Dog") in my 100 Royai Drabble series. The gist of it is this: do not kidnap Riza unless you want to suffer some serious consequences.

 **Disclaimer:** I own nothing! I'm a slave to this fandom, tbh, and I love it.

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 **Wildfire**

* * *

The desire to snag a cigarette and take a few drags was almost overwhelming, but Havoc kept his hands on his service weapon and reminded himself for the tenth time that smoking was a bad idea right now. For once though, it wasn't the nicotine craving that was drilling in the desire for a smoke, but the nerves that felt like they were crawling under his skin. He didn't get nervous on missions very often, having learned a multitude of ways to counteract the feeling, but nothing short of a soothing bad habit would still him now.

It wasn't the fact that he was scared. Maybe he wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, but he knew that there was any room for fear when it came to field work. Fear lead to mistakes and mistakes could lead to people getting injured or killed. But then, Havoc almost wasn't dumb enough to not feel some sort of fear or anxiousness right now. And whether he liked it or not, whenever he felt anxious, he wanted a smoke.

Besides, he wasn't scared for himself. He didn't even think that he was scared for the people they were currently preparing to bombard.

The person that Havoc was scared for stood in front of him, his thick military coat hanging over him like a dark shadow, head bowed slightly as he adjusted the white gloves on his hands, his gun tucked uselessly in the holster where it would most likely stay. Colonel Roy Mustang looked more like an oncoming storm than a soldier, and that was a frightening sight indeed.

Havoc pressed his lips together when Mustang gave the silent command to follow him. He tried desperately to think of what Hawkeye would do in this situation, but then, it was because of her that they were here in the first place. The building that they had determined was the hideout of the remaining suspects was on the outskirts of town in a seemingly innocuous area. It reminded him of the types of homes that he had grown up around in the country, an old building with character that gave nothing away on the outside.

Meanwhile, on the inside, this very place held the man that had planned and executed First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye's kidnapping merely two weeks ago.

What they had been thinking, Havoc didn't know, but then these people, insurgents that thought they could throw the fledgling Colonel's plans off course, didn't know the Colonel. In all honesty, while he would have said beforehand that he'd follow his commanding officer's orders no matter what, Havoc had come to realize that perhaps he hadn't known Mustang either until suffering through the two days where Hawkeye had been missing. He had found that there was something lacking in Mustang when she wasn't around – a careful balance that no one had been aware of until she was gone.

Seeing Mustang slowly become more unhinged over those two days had been disquieting. The man had held it together better than expected at first, remaining confident and upbeat, but by day two, he had slunk around the office, snapping if they so much as breathed out of turn, apologizing shortly after, bursting with a shocking amount of rage, and then falling into fits of pained silence. None of them had known what to do – they had never seen him like that before – and so Havoc had taken it upon himself to do what he could in Hawkeye's place.

It hadn't been pleasant or pretty. Mustang had snarled threats to light him on fire more than once and had even thrown paperwork at him when Havoc had pointed out that Mustang couldn't shirk his every day duties. But in the end, they had gotten through it and he thought closer for it. After Hawkeye was returned to them (or rather, when she returned to them herself), the openly grateful look in Mustang's eyes whenever he faced Havoc at the hospital had been a shock to the system.

That look was gone now though, replaced by a deadly glare that was somehow both cold and fiery.

Normally, Havoc would've gone in first to scout the area, but this wasn't a normal mission. It wasn't a by the books mission. In fact, as far as the military and the government was concerned, there wasn't even a mission occurring right now. Havoc had become aware early on into his time on Mustang's team that some of the field work that he didn't wasn't on the record, at least not until everything was completed. They flew by the seat of their pants and then some on this unit. This, however, would not have a paperwork trail in its wake.

And so when Mustang raised his right hand and flicked his fingers together, Havoc didn't flinch when a burst of flame burst the front door off its hinges. The sudden amount of heat in the cold night was a surprise. Despite the calculated explosion, Mustang was not controlling the heat of his fire very well. Upon realizing that the door was closer to ashes than wood, Havoc changed his opinion. Maybe Mustang wasn't controlling it at all.

Havoc followed his commanding officer inside without complaint. Mustang stormed through the unlit building, ignoring all protocol. The moonlight that streamed in through the windows gleamed in his near black eyes, making him look more like a predator in the night than a soldier, hunting down his quarry with no sign of mercy. Not having the advantage of surprise anymore put an uneasy feeling in Havoc's gut, but there was little room for anything else in Mustang's mind but revenge.

A light under the door down the hall dragged Mustang's attention. Havoc had to bite his own tongue to keep himself from telling Mustang to back down. Hawkeye would've been infuriated with the both of them – Mustang for his lack of care and Havoc for not holding him back – but it wasn't Havoc's position to put Mustang down, it was hers. He had not made the secret promise to hold Mustang to his own or death do him part. All he had done was say that he would follow, and so that was what he did, even if he understood on some level that the fire in Mustang's eyes was volatile.

This time, when Mustang snapped his fingers together, Havoc was forced to shield his face from the blast. Fire raged down the short hallway in a spiral and hit the door. Mustang gave him little time to recover as he swept into the room. Havoc choked down a protest as he rushed inside after him. One man was pinned underneath the door and, judging by the way the metal was smoking and how still his outstretched hand was, already dead. He hadn't even been given a chance to repent.

When a light-haired man began to struggle to his feet with the help of an overturned table, Havoc snapped his gun in his direction. "Stay on the ground!" He could only pray that the man would listen. He still wanted to believe that some of them would make this out alive, but if the guy were to try anything, he knew that Mustang would not hesitate to incinerate him on the spot. A sigh of relief threatened to spill out of his mouth when the man froze on the spot and put his shaking hands in the air.

"Marko Sirokov." Mustang's voice was like a knife cutting through the tension in the room, somehow both flat and sharp at the same time. If that tone had been directed towards him, Havoc wouldn't have been able to stop himself from flinching. As Mustang's eyes swept around the room, the four remaining men in front of them passed each other leery looks. A sudden snap cracked in the air and flames circled all the men in question. "I won't repeat myself again! Marko Sirokov!"

A man with dark hair flecked with grey and a scar running down the left side of his face shakily stood to his feet, flinching back when his hand accidentally got too close to the fire surrounding him. As soon as he did so, the flames died down with the exception of a few things that had had caught fire. Havoc could tell that the man was doing his best not to tremble, but when Mustang settled on him, Sirokov couldn't hide the fire in his eyes.

"I can assume you know who I am," Mustang said.

Sirokov nodded his head. "Flame Alchemist."

"Two weeks ago, you took something that was mine, something very precious to me."

Even though he was on Mustang's side, Havoc almost shivered himself. It would be difficult for him to forget the way Mustang's face had transformed from anguish to rage the moment he had realized that Hawkeye had been kidnapped. It was different from the infuriated behavior he displayed whenever he was feeling protective and or the somewhat comically temperamental response when he was jealous. No, the rage that was simmering under Mustang's skin right now was dangerous, wild, and just barely under control. Seeing that fury in him then had made Havoc realize that Hawkeye meant a hell of a lot more than just a good subordinate to Mustang. Seeing it in him now just plain terrified him.

In his eyes, he had failed to protect Hawkeye, and so there was only one thing he could do. He could have vengeance for her – and for himself.

Strange that Havoc could feel something akin to pity for men that had done something that had pissed him the hell off as well, but then, these men hadn't had any idea that they weren't just kidnapping a Colonel's adjutant. Maybe if they had kidnapped Havoc, they would've stood a chance at getting out of here alive.

"If you thought that you could use her as leverage against me, you were dead wrong." Mustang stepped forward. Havoc thought the light haired man that had tried to stand up earlier might start crying. Sirokov, for his part, did not move, but he didn't dare look away from Mustang either. He had to know that this was it; he had to know that he was at an end. He had to know that he was staring death in the face right now. "You only brought your downfall that much quicker."

Sweat beginning to form on his brow, Sirokov grasped at any remaining straws he might have left. "I have information on–"

"I don't care."

"Men high on the wanted lists! Future attacks against the government!"

"I DON'T CARE!" Mustang roared.

Havoc forced himself to breathe through his nose. Sirokov clamped his mouth shut and gawked in horror. The light-haired man began to beg under his breath. The two other men stared ahead without seeing, as if they knew that there was nothing left for them to look forward to.

He knew that he should say something. Even though she wasn't with them, he could hear Hawkeye screaming in the back of his mind, telling him to do something to stop Mustang. She wouldn't have stood for this kind of behavior from their commanding officer. She would've scolded him for being selfish, for allowing his need for revenge to overwhelm him, for letting his guilt and grief cloud his better judgment. When Mustang tipped too far into the dark, she would have balanced him and shown him the light. She would not have been afraid to jump into the fire in order to pull him out.

 _You'll have to forgive me, Riza,_ Havoc thought with inward regretful smile. _I'm not you._

And if was being honest, Havoc wanted these men to suffer what they had done to his friend as well. In that, he was just as selfish as Mustang, and so he bit his tongue and merely stood at Mustang's back.

"You took her," Mustang snarled. "You chained her up, starved her, interrogated her. You _hurt_ her." The men that wanted to hurt the Colonel couldn't have found a better way to do so, but in kidnapping Hawkeye, they had also signed their own death warrants. It was clear that they knew that now. "Let this be a lesson to the next group that wants to bring me down: you come after _me_ , not my subordinates, not her – or you won't live to regret it."

"There will be no one to give your warning if you kill us all, Flame Alchemist," Sirokov pointed out shakily.

Mustang tugged at his glove and cast a cold, dead look in Sirokov's direction. "Corpses burnt to unrecognizable ashes speak well enough." He barely left Havoc any time to get out of the room before flicking his fingers and causing flames to burst into life around the four men. The fires licked at his back, but then dragged away from him so that they could center on the screaming figures in the room.

Once he was clear from the fire, Havoc turned around and shielded his eyes, squinting against the firelight so that he could search the room. A dark figure swept through the door carelessly, the black coat flickering behind him with each step. Mustang didn't even bother to look back as he brushed past Havoc, as if he didn't hear the agonized shrieks of the dying men behind him.

"Let's go," Mustang ordered brusquely.

Glancing inside once more, Havoc watched as Mustang's flames began to take a life of their own and destroy the rest of the room and then followed his commanding officer. There was a new tension in the man's shoulders that told Havoc that Mustang would shoulder the weight of these men's deaths as well. It didn't matter if he believed that they deserved it. There wasn't supposed to be any room for things like vengeance in Mustang's life. As odd and confusing as it sounded, considering he was a man that was gunning for the top and seemingly only cared for himself, Mustang wasn't allowed to be as selfish as that.

And yet he had caved to his own whims and Havoc hadn't done a damn thing to stop him. After all, he had been the one to figure out the location of this hideout and he had been the one to give Mustang the information when he knew damn well what the consequences would be. It was going to take a lot of work to convince Hawkeye to forgive him for that one – to forgive the both of them really.

When they were outside, Havoc forced himself to trot to Mustang's side. "Sir, we can't just–"

There was another loud snap and this time, Havoc started in surprise when the building behind them exploded from the inside out. Shards of flaming wood and pieces of metal tumbled in the air, ashes slowly falling over their heads like snow. Havoc gaped at the burning building. It crumbled before him, the house practically groaning behind the sounds of wood crackling and melting. Black smoke billowed heavily in the air. By the time the fire went out, there would be nothing left. The blaze was enormous, bizarrely reminiscent of all the huge bonfires that he'd had while growing up in the country. All he needed was some marshmallows and crackers.

He blinked the inappropriate memories away and turned to face his commanding officer. Mustang stood there, not looking back at the blazing building, and began to carefully pull his ignition gloves off a finger at a time. He had always known that Mustang was dangerous, considering his skill set, but it was perhaps the first time Havoc saw the man as barely put together. He'd seen Mustang coming apart at the seams when Hawkeye was kidnapped, witnessed the man unraveling like a ball of yarn. It had been then when Havoc had realized that there was something far more emotional and delicate underneath cocksure, arrogant, lackadaisical bastard persona that Mustang wore on a day-to-day basis.

But this… This was something different. Mustang was more than just the wielder of flame alchemy; he _was_ wildfire and that was deadly and difficult to control, maybe even impossible, save for Hawkeye alone. Havoc knew that there was nothing that he could do to stop that kind of fire; all he could do was help guide it, hope for the best, and pray that Hawkeye would not fault him for that.


End file.
